Visiting Faculty Spring 2007

Harry Bliss is a staff artist at The New Yorker. A regular contributor to Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s series Little Lit, Bliss has illustrated many children’s books, including A Fine, Fine School by Sharon, The Cat Who Came for Christmas by Cleveland Amory, and two New York Times best-sellers, Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin.

Ivan Brunetti has written and drawn three issues of his comic book series Schizo, as well as a collection of gag cartoons HAW!, for Fantagraphics Books. He has also drawn comics and illustrations for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, TIME Digital, Spin, Mother Jones, Fast Company, New City, The Stranger, The New York Press, The Baffler, The Comics Journal, Green, Verbatim, In These Times, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, and Cartoon Network Presents. Brunetti’s comics have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Swedish.

Greg Cook has comics in numerous publications, such as Nickelodeon Magazine, Pulse Magazine, True Believer, New Art Examiner, Arthur, Non, and L’Association’s Comix 2000. His work was featured in the exhibit “Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation,” which toured the US in 2003 and 2004. The success of his book, Catch As Catch Can (Highwater Books, 2001), helped him to win the “Promising New Talent” award at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD, in 2002.

Leela Corman has produced illustrations for numerous clients and publications, including Simon & Schuster, The New York Times, WNET/Thirteen, The Boston Phoenix, BUST Magazine, and more. Her comics have been featured in several anthologies, and her graphic novel, Queen’s Day, was a Xeric Award winner in 2000.

Judy Hansen is the founder of the Hansen Literary Agency, representing the unique vision of artists and writers around the world. Her clients include comics legends R. Crumb and Will Eisner, as well as James O’Barr, Chuck Dixon, Mark Schultz, and CCS’s own James Sturm.

Tom Hart won a 1994 Xeric grant for his book, Hutch Owen’s Working Hard, featuring his charming but surly antagonistic street “bum.” Two books of Hutch Owen stories to date were by Top Shelf Productions in 2001 and 2004. Hutch Owen has been published in Japanese, Portuguese, French and Spanish. He also created an original manga for Kodansha Japan called Pitch Unger. His non-Hutch material includes The Sands, Banks/Eubanks, New Hat and countless mini-comics. Tom Hart is the founder of serializer.net and now co-creates a daily comic strip called Ali’s House, launching in Spring ’09 from King Features Syndicate. Tom teaches cartooning in New York City where he lives with his wife and fellow cartoonist, Leela Corman.

Jay Hosler is an assistant professor at Juniata College in Huntington, PA. In addition to contributing several articles to scientific publications such as Behavioral Neuroscience and The Journal of Experimental Biology, Jay has published numerous comics and two graphic novels with biological themes. Clan Apis, a Xeric Award winner for 2000, and The Sandwalk Adventures (2003) present detailed educational material within the framework of a narrative. A project funded by the National Science Foundation to develop a chapter of a Biology textbook in comic form is currently in progress.

Paul Karasik was the associate editor of Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s avant-garde international comics and graphics review, RAW. His graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass, done in collaboration with artist David Mazzucchelli, has been published in six languages and was named one of the best 100 comics of the century by The Comics Journal. Karasik edited the Fletcher Hanks collection I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!, published by Fantagraphic in 2007. Another Fletcher Hanks volume, You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! will be published in 2009.

Denis Kitchen has been an active cartoonist, writer, editor, publisher, and entrepreneur since 1968. In its 30-year run, Kitchen Sink Press published some of the best underground and alternative comics and graphic novels available, from artists such as R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Dave McKean, Scott McCloud, and Alan Moore. Although KSP closed its doors in 1999, The Kitchen empire of publishing, art sales, and merchandise continues through Denis Kitchen Publishing, The Kitchen & Hansen Agency, and Steve Krupp’s Gallery and Curio Shoppe. Denis also continues to serve as president of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which he founded in 1986.

Ed Koren has published over 900 cartoons in The New Yorker. His work, which has appeared in dozens of other publications, is included in the collections of the Fogg Museum and is regularly displayed in art exhibitions around the world. Koren has illustrated many children’s books and also has written and illustrated some of his own, including Very Hairy Harry and Behind the Wheel. He has taught at Brown University, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Kelly Link‘s debut collection of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, was described by Salon as “an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler, and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Her second collection was selected for best of 2006 lists by Time Magazine, Salon, Boldtype, The Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Capitol Times. Kelly has taught and visited at numerous schools and workshops, including Bard College, Lenoir-Rhyne College, The Imagination Workshop at Cleveland State University, and New England Institute of Art and Communications. She now lives in Northampton, MA.

Skip Morrow achieved international acclaim for his best selling I HATE CATS series first published in 1980. In addition to selling millions of greeting cards throughout North America and Australia, Skip has published over a dozen books, most recently The Joy of Smoking (The Ink Group, 2000). Skip and his wife Laraine are partners in running The Art of Humor Gallery, located at their studio/home compound in Wilmington, VT.

Ginee Seo began her publishing career as an Oscar Dystel Fellow at Bantam Books in 1987. She joined the Bantam BFYR department in 1989, where she edited paperback original series for middle-grade and young adult readers, including some of the early Saddle Club and Sweet Valley Twins books. She joined HarperTrophy as an editor in 1990 and became vice president and editorial director of the imprint in 1998. During her ten years at Harper, she acquired paperback rights for many award-winning books and also published and launched Trophy’s first best-selling children’s hardcover series, The Series of Unfortunate Events. She joined Atheneum in the year 2000 as associate publisher, where with her outstanding editorial staff she published a number of acclaimed books including National Book Award winners, Newbery Honor and Newbery winners, as well as Gris Grimley’s Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness and Mark Siegal’s Seadogs. She was given her own imprint in 2005.

Mark Siegel is the Editorial Director at First Second Books, a publishing company that aims for “high quality, literate graphic novels for a wide age range.” A former designer at Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, Mark is the illustrator of several picture books and graphic novels, including the upcoming To Dance: A Ballerina’s Story.

Christian Trimmer is an assistant editor at Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group, where he works primarily on young adult fiction and graphic novels. Current projects include: The Market, the story of a young woman’s efforts to achieve “blue chip” status in her senior class; Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, a sweeping narrative of the famed Negro Leagues pitcher; and El Cazador, a bind up of the Eisner-nominated CrossGen comic series.